The National Guard in France was founded in July, 1789 to replace the royal soldiers who had been forbidden entry to Paris. Other cities and towns followed suit…
Category: Greek History
Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela & Archbishop Makarios
These three names (and the persons themselves) are connected by the historical fact that each was imprisoned as penalty for their nationalism, and each became President of their…
François Mitterand
Mitterand was a life-long Socialist who served in the brief French military resistance to German might between 1939 and 1940, and is then said to have co-operated with…
Colonization
These days the word strikes a sour note, arousing images of rough settlements, starving ‘piccaninies’, whips, shackles, thoughtless government from a distance of thousdands of miles etc. If…
War in the air Part II: Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Blizkrieg from Nazi Germany that opened the Second War in 1939 showed that apart from tank power, air power was a vital component of…
Ptolemys, poisons and Cleopatra
“There was a lady of Egypt, I’m told The barge she sat in was of burnished gold; Her moral code made the sphinx perspire, Her Roman scandals set…
Appeasement
A bit of a dirty word since 1938 but it shouldn’t be. There is enough appeasement going on now over the disgusting situation in Syria to fill the…
A child’s guide to the Greek philosophers
I suppose that the Peloponnesian War (q.v.) was, shamefully, the downfall of the ancient Greek Empire. War had penetrated men’s minds and they did bad things. With Pericles…
Sparta and things Spartan
Sparta as the English call this spectacular place in the southern Peloponnese (Greece) was a city/state, and the capital of the state of Laconia. This small country was…
Gunboat diplomacy
It might well have been Lord Palmerston (twice Prime Minister of Britain, 1855- 58, 1859- 65, q.v.) who concreted this term, though gunboat diplomacy in its various…